In an email to his colleagues, Hansen was arguing against a recently-passed bill called HB 135, repealing parts of the Stand Your Ground Law — which dictates a person's right to use deadly force as a defensive strategy and be immune to prosecution.

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There were two critical ingredients missing in the illustrious stories purporting to demonstrate the practical side of retreat. Not that retreat may not be possible mind you. What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels of Amsterdam? Why children and vagina's (sic) of course. While the tales relate the actions of a solitary male the outcome cannot relate to similar situations where children and women and mothers are the potential victims.

Okay. For someone who's ostensibly helping form the legislature of an entire state, his grammar is also terrible, but that's a whole other issue. Rep. Chris Watrous, (D), wrote back: "Are you really using 'vaginas' as a crude catch-all for women? Really? Please think before you send out such offensive language on the legislative listserve."

Yesterday, after being roundly criticized by the Internet as well as his colleagues, Hansen offered a non-apology. Via Raw Story: "Having a fairly well educated mind I do not need self appointed wardens to A: try to put words in my mouth for political gain and B: Turn a well founded strategy in communication into an insulting accusation, and finally if you find the noun vagina insulting or in some way offensive then perhaps a better exercise might be for you to re-examine your psyche. [...] My point in the choice of words was two-fold: One was shock content and the other was to try to get into the mind of the perpetrator. This is something that has been totally blown out of proportion."

But this morning he finally admitted that he had used "blatantly offensive, insensitive, and frankly, stupid language. [...] The debate over the rights of everyone to protect their home and family is too important to be overshadowed by the clumsy and disrespectful way in which I tried to make my point."

It's common knowledge that many politicians don't necessarily have women's best interests at heart and are inherently sexist. When have we not known this? But really, what's notable here is Hansen's total obliviousness to the fact that being chauvinistic is, you know, WRONG. Calling women "vaginas" in an official e-mail is wrong. The fact that he wasn't aware that he'd get flak for this is as much a problem as the actual email.